One thing I gained from my recent experience with Seattle Musical Theatre is a greater sympathy for my blog-brother Callimachus. Cal's blog, Done with Mirrors, abruptly went inactive a couple months ago, probably due to work-related pressures. As his regular readers know, Cal is a journalist who works at the news desk at a medium-sized newspaper. From time to time he would complain of the extreme partisanship that dominates his workplace.

Callimachus is not a natural fit for either political party as they are currently defined. I suppose the closest brief description I could give is to call him a "Reagan Democrat" of the Jim Webb sort, though that's not exactly right either. But Cal is often pushed to the right by the negative example of his co-workers, whose mindless and noxious knee-jerk leftism he sometimes described in terms so exaggerated that I found it not quite credible.

When McCain nominated Sarah Palin to be his running mate, rehearsals for 1776 were getting into full swing, and I was attending almost every evening. As you might expect from a group of thespians in Seattle, the cast and crew of the show was overwhelmingly liberal. If there were any Republicans among them, they never identified themselves to me. After the Palin nomination, the political chatter began in earnest. Every day, at every break, the gang would gather together to talk politics. Except they didn't really talk about politics. They just amused themselves by making fun of Republicans. Night after night they'd be sniggering about "lipstick on a moose" or "I can see Russia from my house!" and lots of sneering about how oafish and stupid all Alaskans and other red-staters must be. Palin really energized them. They just couldn't get enough of ridiculing her. After a while I just wanted to scream, "Jesus Christ, can't you people just shut the fuck up about Sarah Palin for one minute?!"

I'm a great admirer of Obama and (though I occasionally break ranks with my party) unlike Callimachus I've always considered myself a Democrat. If just two weeks of this, for about three hours a day, was enough to make me want to turn Republican, I can only imagine what eight hours a day for years must do to him.

I had no desire to spark a debate at rehearsal, not even a constructive one, so instead of confronting my colleagues I would simply walk away. But once we got into dress rehearsals and were forced into close quarters with each other, that wasn't always possible. After about a week of it I mentioned to the stage manager, without actually requesting any action be taken, that I didn't care for the incessant political chatter. About another week after that, there came a note asking people to refrain. My guess is I'm not the only one who complained. I know there was at least one other member of the cast who also disliked it. (Who knows, maybe he was actually a Republican. He didn't say, and I didn't ask.)

The response to the note was revealing. On the whole, the partisan jokes and jabs were greatly reduced, but they never stopped completely. They did stop completely from certain individuals, though. From one of my fellow actors, who had been one of the two worst offenders before the note, I never heard a single political word ever again. I didn't realize this until about a week later, but once I made the connection that greatly increased my respect for him as a professional. Of the others, many attempted to tone it down but sometimes lapsed. A few, who weren't among the worst, seemed completely unaffected, and one guy went into defiance mode, saying, "I'll talk about whatever I want; they can't tell me what to do."

Before the final weekend of the run, we had a special closed performance. The theater company had made an arrangement with a local radio station whereby the station could give away free tickets for this special Wednesday night show, and in exchange they would give us lots of free on-air publicity. We had known about this for several weeks, but what I didn't realize until the night of the show — and I suspect most of the others didn't realize either — is that the radio station in question is the local Fox News affiliate, and the primary promoter of the program was the local conservative talk radio host (Kirby Wilbur). We had been told the radio station's call letters long ago, but they meant nothing to me.

As it turned out, that audience was the most appreciative and enthusiastic audience we had in the entire run. Afterward, Mr Wilbur raved about us on air and presumably helped sales that much more for the final weekend. This pleased me, because I think it disturbed the preconceptions of some of my liberal colleagues. In their narrow us-vs-them world-view, Republicans are ignorant louts who don't appreciate the arts. Just as teenagers can't imagine that their 40-something parents have any interest in sex, liberals can't imagine that conservatives care about anything remotely intellectual or aesthetic.

It was nice to have such a direct reminder that we're not so different. It reminded me of Obama's own line, which he introduced in his speech at the 2004 convention and has echoed many times since

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